Financial services firm shut down by DDoS attack

Apr, 2017

Marketing executives who don’t get their expected bonuses can get testy. Unfortunately, this particular marketing executive at a financial services firm also had some on-the-job performance issues. Upset that he didn’t get the bonus money he thought he was entitled to, the marketing executive turned to his cousin for revenge.

The cousin, 26, was a bit of a hacker and mounted a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the marketing executive’s company. The attack shut down the company’s web site and servers. The DDoS attack cost the company ballpark $800,000 in lost revenue and unhappy customers not being able to use the electronic web portal.

Cytelligence assigned a forensic investigator and a security specialist to the case.

“The marketing executive was fired, with cause, and he’s paying back some of the money,” says Daniel Tobok, CEO of Cytelligence.

“One of the things we’re trying to drill into clients is that you don’t have to be a genius with an IQ of 160 to mount a DDoS attack,” says Tobok.

“All kinds of information is available on Google. Millennials are very comfortable using the web and they Google everything. This is the new generation and businesses need to pay attention to that,” says Tobok.

“With Google, people can become very dangerous very quickly,” says Tobok.

“Hackers are no longer the loners, the geeks, the math geniuses. It’s a mistake to think that all hackers have long hair, tattoos, and dress in all-black. Those are 1980s clichés. Today, hackers could be anyone, including your employees,” adds Tobok.